The carbon in your closet: cotton vs. polyester and other fabricated dilemmas

Outside/In

NHPR

Science, Renewable Energy, Energy, Documentary, Outdoor Recreation, Environment, Climate, Public Radio, Wildlife, Nature, Natural World, Ecology, Society & Culture, Human Interest Stories, Wildlife Management, Biology, Outdoors, Wilderness, Natural Sciences

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Synthetic clothes are made from fossil fuels, and cotton is water intensive. But figuring out what fabrics are best for the environment may be missing the point.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So that's in, I'm Nate Hegey, here today with a couple of my favorite people, Felix Poon.
0:05.6	Hey, hey.
0:06.7	And Jung Yoon-Hon.
0:07.8	Hello.
0:08.4	And Felix, you got something for us.
0:10.3	Yeah.
0:11.1	So we got an email from one of our listeners named Lucy Olasso,
0:15.8	and Lucy has a problem, which is that she's heard that synthetic fabrics,
0:20.0	like polyester and spandex, are bad for the environment and bad for your health.
0:25.1	But she's also like, I would love to have a comfortable pair of leggings.
0:29.2	And I actually had to go down an escalator in Macy's to get to this level.
0:34.8	So I actually called Lucy, and we met up at the mall of New Hampshire to do some shopping.
0:40.3	90s percent polyester, 10 percent spandex, 50 percent nylon.
0:44.7	Do you know what, fleece is made of?
0:46.5	fleece, by the way, is just another kind of polyester.
0:49.0	No.
0:49.7	No, nope.
0:51.6	No, thank you.
0:52.7	This is really tough because most yoga pants are just all made out of spandex.
0:57.7	Yeah.
0:59.1	Yeah, and so Lucy was looking at places like EMS or REI.
1:04.1	It's all made from these synthetic plastic-based fabric.
	...

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